WASHINGTON — Major League Baseball sailed through roughly six weeks of spring training without any major coronavirus disruptions, but just hours before first pitches were set to be thrown across the country, the problem lurched up again.
The Mets’ season-opening game against the Washington Nationals was postponed on Thursday because of at least one positive coronavirus test among the Nationals players and because several other players were determined to have been close contacts with that individual, which requires them to be isolated as well.
The earliest the game can be played is Saturday.
M.L.B. issued a statement Thursday saying that the game was postponed “because of ongoing contact tracing involving members of the Nationals organization.